Apple picking: Cell phones being snatched

Updated 4:28 pm, Sunday, November 18, 2012

STAMFORD -- A woman walking on Bedford Street downtown Wednesday night had the cellphone she was talking on ripped out of her hand by a bike-riding phone bandit, police said.

A group of bike-riding youths have stolen more than a dozen iPhones from women who have had the electronic devices snatched from their grasp by the stealthy thieves. Police say the thieves are able to disable the phones and even render their GPS system unworkable and untraceable within minutes and then resell them for up to $200 each.

On Wednesday night the woman was walking in front of Quattro Pazzi on Bedford Street when a bicyclist came riding up behind her and snatched the phone she was using, Sgt. Richard Barbagallo said.

The 45-year-old woman said she did not see the man's face and told police he was wearing a gray hoodie and fled on his bike. In many of the theft cases, the thieves were riding BMX bikes and stalked women closer to the railroad station, police have said.

Barbagallo said police are reviewing surveillance tapes from area businesses in hopes of identifying the thief. Police checked the area after the theft was called in, but no suspects were found.

Thefts of cellphones -- particularly the expensive smartphones containing everything from photos and music to private e-mails and bank account statements -- are costing consumers millions of dollars and sending law enforcement agencies and wireless carriers nationwide scrambling for solutions.

In San Francisco, police have gone undercover and launched a transit ad campaign, warning folks to "be smart with your smartphone." Similar warnings went out in Oakland, where there have been nearly 1,300 cellphone robberies this year.

When Apple's ballyhooed iPhone 5 went on sale last month, New York City police encouraged buyers to register their phone's serial numbers with the department. That came just months after a 26-year-old chef at the Museum of Modern Art was killed for his iPhone while heading home to the Bronx.

In St. Louis, city leaders proposed an ambitious ordinance requiring anyone who resells cellphones to obtain a secondhand dealers license. Resellers also would need to record the phone's identity number and collect detailed information including the seller's names, addresses, a copy of their driver's licenses -- even their thumbprints.

Though some experts put annual cellphone losses in the billions of dollars, there is no precise figure on how many devices are stolen each year.

Many cities with highest rates of stolen and lost phones also rank among the FBI's listing of U.S. cities with the highest crime rates, including Cleveland, Detroit, Oakland and Newark, N.J., Mahaffey said.

In Chicago, two men were each charged with armed robbery last month after stealing an iPhone from a teen.

In Oakland, nearly three dozen people were recently arrested during a sweep for allegedly stealing smartphones. On Tuesday, police arrested 15-year-old boy who allegedly swiped a woman's iPhone near Oakland's City Hall and sold it in downtown San Francisco for $200 to buy marijuana.

"It's a quick crime of opportunity, a snatch and grab, either by foot or on bike," Officer Johnna Watson, an Oakland police spokeswoman, said. "The thieves are gone in an instant."